THE TEUTONIC KNIGHTS
Richard the Lionheart, the English king who was winning immortal fame at Acre, hated the German arms that had driven his Welf brother-in-law, Heinrich the Lion, into exile a few years before, Richard recovered Acre but little more. The French king, Phillip Augustus, went home, angry at his repeated insults, and most Germans left, too, determined to get revenge on him at the first opportunity. The German nobles and prelates that had served at Acre and those who had run home were bitterly disappointed with the outcome. They felt they had been betrayed by everyone--by the English, by the Byzantines, by the Welfs, and by one another. They had but one worthwhile accomplishment to show for all their suffering: the foundation of the Teutonic Order.
In 1198, the patriarch of Jerusalem, the king of Jerusalem, the head of the crusading army, the masters of the Templar and the Hospital of St. John attended the celebration establishing the Teutonic Knights as a military order. Pope Innocent III (1198--1216) dated February 19, 1199, confirmed the event and specified the Order would care for the sick according to the rule of the Hospitallers. It would conduct its other business by following the Templar rule.
From the beginning, the Teutonic Order grew stupendously and the numbers skyrocketed, particularly during Grand Master Hermann von Salza time. Von Salza was successful in gaining many favors for the Order because he was a confidante to both the German emperor Frederick II and the popes. His immediate successors also did well. Between 1215 and 1300, The Teutonic Order was invited into Greece, Hungary (1211), and Prussia (1226) by secular rulers to perform military duties on their behalf. In the Peloponnesus the Frankish Prince of Achaia provided communes near Kalamata for the Teutonic Knights in return for military service; there are traces of the Order's service there until 1500. The Hungarian King Andrew II (1205--1235) expelled the Order in 1225 when it became strong and could have threatened his rule. The conquest of Prussia began in 1230 (after the Order's Grand Master was named prince of the Holy Roman Empire) and lasted until 1283.
In addition to the Holy Land," the order could be found elsewhere in the Mediterranean and western Europe: Armenia, Cyprus, Sicily, Apulia, Lombardy, Spain, France, Alsace, Austria, Bohemia, the Lowlands, Germany, and Livonia.
By 1221 the German Order was given the same privileges as the Templar and Hospitallers by Pope Honorius III (1216--1227). Both senior orders fought the independence of the Teutonic Order until about 1240. The German Order didn’t equal in wealth and possessions than the other two military orders that were more than 80 years older, but it became the only other order to rival them in international influence and activity.
Their downfall began in 1410 When Poland and Lithuania, enemies of the Order, became stronger and stronger. In 1410 at Tannenberg, the Order was crushed in a battle against a merger led by these powers. The result was a bankrupting of the Order and significant reduction in its military and political capabilities. In 1467, the whole of western Prussia surrendered to Poland and the eastern part acknowledged the superiority of the king of Poland. Michael Küchmeister von Sternberg, the new Grand Master was unable to revive the Order's fortunes.
Although it had lost control of all of its Prussian lands, the Teutonic Order retained its territories within the Holy Roman Empire and Livonia, although the Livonian branch retained considerable independence. Many of the Imperial belongings were ruined in the Peasants' War, subsequently confiscated by Protestant territorial princes.
The Teutonic Knights concentrated on their possessions in the Holy Roman Empire. All of the Teutonic Knights' possessions were secondary to the Grand Master whose seat was in Bad Mergentheim.
After the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, membership in the Order was open to Protestants, The Teutonic Knights now were tri-denominational, and there were Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed bailiwicks.
The military history of the Teutonic Knights ended in 1809, when Napoleon Bonaparte ordered their dissolution and the Order lost its remaining secular holdings to Napoleon's vassals and allies.
During the Third Crusade (1189-1191) the German arms was expecting the greatest victory they had ever had. With Friedrich Barbarossa, leading them to Syria, where his army could pass easily into the Holy Land. There he was expected to lead the combined armies of the Holy Roman Empire, France, and England to recover the lost ports, thereby opening the way for trade and reinforcements, after which he would lead the Christian forces on to the liberation of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, he drowned in a small mountain stream. The army dispersed, some going back to Germany because their presence was required at the election of the German king (Friedrich's son Heinrich VI), others because they anticipated a civil war in which they might lose their lands to the Welfs, or win their lands. Only a few nobles and prelates honoured their vows by continuing their journey on to Acre, then besieged by crusader armies from France and England, which were suffering terrible agony from heat and disease.
